Our hackathon weekend will bring together journalists, developers, designers, nonprofits and the community to create projects using open data on immigration, code and technology. Journalists, nonprofits and the community will bring their knowledge of the issue; designers and developers will bring their tech and problem-solving skills. And we'll share what we learn with the wider world -- all of the data visualization projects and work developed during the event will be open source.

With open data empowered by creativity, we can crack some of the misperceptions and challenges about immigration in Chicago.

Your creativity is your limit!

Bring ideas, your laptop and help shape the future of information.

Training, food, data, prizes...We will cover ALL but space is limited, act quickly!

Developers, meet up with journalists. We will be forming the teams during the mixer as well as the topics to hack for the weekend. Create your team and start your engines.

Saturday June 1

9:00 a.m. The fun continues with an all-day hackathon. Work with your teams to produce your amazing project.

We will provide food and drinks.

Sunday June 2

9:00 a.m. Continue working and eating.

4:00 p.m. Teams will begin pitching their projects. Pitches are limited to three minutes per team.

The only skills you'll need are your enthusiasm and willingness to have a great time at our hackathon. If you know a few programming languages, this event is for you. If you have a desire to learn digital map design, basic programming, cell phone video production, or interactive graphics, this event is for you as well.

Great prizes!

Best insight team project: $1,500

Best data visualization team project: $1,500

2nd. place data visualization team project: $1,000

Audience Favorite: $500

PLUS: Best storytelling with data visualization (animations and infographics are welcome!): $2,500

Data:

The organizers will provide the data for the hackathon. The data will be in CSV, Excel or Google spreadsheets formats to speed up the event.

Goals:

Create teams with at least one programmer, journalist and designer. The goal for each group is to build data visualizations projects, apps, infographics, games or applications on immigration. We have a special prize for a video data animation. A news application can also crowdsource data or be a game. A good goal for the weekend is to produce 560x400 pixel application that can be embedded into any web page.

We're looking for:

Journalists

People with an understanding of programming and development workflow (UX/UI visual designers, desktop application developers,mobile application developers,backend and front end gurus, realtime application experts)

Community members interested in transforming and innovating information in the context of immigration.

Anyone with energy and enthusiasm for the Hacks/Hackers mission, which is to rethink and invent the future of media through inspiration, education and collaboration between journalists and technologists.